Sweat Free Apparel

Brown Student Labor Alliance fights to ensure that university apparel is not manufactured in sweatshop factories and that the rights of employees of companies that produce Brown apparel are respected. To this end, it promotes the implementation of the Designated Suppliers Program to ensure fair labor standards for university clothing, and the university’s membership in the Worker Rights Consortium, which monitors factories that make college-logo apparel to avoid exploitative working conditions, as well as the university’s disaffiliation from the Fair Labor Association, a sham industry-led organization that masquerades under the label of a labor rights consortium. SLA also supports the university cutting its apparel contracts with companies that engage in sweatshop practices and violate its Vendor Code of Conduct.

SLA participated in campaigns in conjunction with United Students Against Sweatshops for contract cuts with Russell Athletic and Nike, both of which have historically engaged in egregious sweatshop labor practices. SLA is excited at the international victories in both of those campaigns, resulting in Russell re-opening two factories in Honduras that had closed in response to unionization, and Nike agreeing to pay millions of dollars in legally-mandated severance pay to 1800 displaced Honduran garment workers.

Learn more about the campus fight against sweatshop apparel at Brown via newspaper articles here, here, and here.